Xero · How it works
How Cosmic Bills reads a supplier invoice
Optical character recognition, a trained extraction model, and a review step. What actually happens between uploading a PDF and a coded bill in Xero.
Published · Updated
"It reads your invoices" is a description that does not tell you much about what to expect. Here is what happens between dropping a PDF onto the page and seeing a coded bill in Xero.
1. The document is read
Optical character recognition converts the PDF into text with positions attached — not just what the words are, but where on the page they sit. Layout matters, because on an invoice the meaning of a number is largely determined by which column and row it is in.
2. Values are identified
A trained model works out which of those values is the supplier, the invoice number, the dates, the tax, the total, and — the difficult part — where the line-item table starts and ends and what each of its columns means. Supplier invoice layouts vary enormously, which is why this is a learned task rather than a set of rules.
3. Your mappings are applied
The supplier is matched against your contact list, and the account coding you have configured for that supplier and its products is applied. This step is why the second month is better than the first.
4. You check it
The result appears next to the original document. You can edit any value, add or delete lines, split a line across cost centres, and then approve. Nothing posts to Xero until you do.
Step four is not optional
Extraction succeeds at less than 100%, and Cosmic Bills says so in its terms. The review step is where that gets caught. Any accounts payable tool that suggests you can skip it is describing a risk, not a feature.
See Cosmic Bills for Xero for how to connect, or the features page for the whole workflow.
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